NJPW King of Pro Wrestling 2019: Results, Highlights and Analysis

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Jyushin Thunder Liger vs Minoru Suzuki – Special Match

It can be said that this match is at least seventeen years in the making. The pre-match video is an evocative display of the nuance of their feud, aggravated over the past several weeks by Suzuki attacking him on commentary, taking his mask, and disrespecting him enough that he brought out Kishin Liger at Destruction — who’s only ever emerged three other times in Liger’s long wrestling career.

In their last fight before King of Pro Wrestling, Suzuki called again for Yamada, for the man behind the mask, to fight him one-on-one. Liger took the mic and preemptively apologized to everyone who was going to attend King of Pro Wrestling because, he explained, they weren’t going to see a wrestling match, they were going to see a murder.

Considering that Liger was provoked severely enough to get himself disqualified on account of a chair, it appeared to everyone that he would make good on his warning. Another return of Kishin Liger and a bloodbath seemed inevitable.

However, Kishin Liger didn’t make an appearance at King of Pro Wrestling — Suzuki got who he asked for.

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Battle Liger has been seen nearly as rarely as Kishin Liger, and while Kishin is his dark alter ego, Battle Liger is — along with being the man who lost to Suzuki in their MMA match seventeen years ago — an apex fighter, the pinnacle of the focused and seasoned fighter that we see in Jyushin Thunder Liger. Battle Liger sacrifices enough restraint to be able to effectively fight Suzuki without going so far as to almost kill him.

There’s an untenable amount of taunting, much of it initiated by Liger himself, provoking Suzuki into fighting out of rage instead of resolve. They trade grapples and near-submits, feeling each other out, Liger more violent than usual and Suzuki somewhat more cautious.

Suzuki continues to try and unmask Liger, but Liger has accepted it at this point, and at times he goads Suzuki into it. There are also moments where, despite the chaos, they provoke each other into being better, to stand up, to fight.

This match quickly turns from several near-submissions into a battle of who can withstand more strikes and get back up. Suzuki remains standing throughout and, to his enormous credit, Liger keeps getting back up. A gotch piledriver finishes Liger, but then something happens.

As soon as the bell sounds the end of the match, Suzuki brings a chair into the ring, raising it above Liger to put him away for good. He tosses it aside and after staring out into the crowd for a moment, he gets down on his knees and bows to Liger, both of them alone in the ring surrounded by a maelstrom of crying and cheering fans. Before he leaves the ring, Liger takes the mic and says: “Thank you, Suzuki.”

Both of these men wanted one thing from the culmination of their decades-long feud, especially on the eve of Liger’s retirement: to face the best that each has to offer the other. That’s what they have earned, over such a long time. The amount of times that Suzuki has shown such a genuine display of respect can probably be counted on one hand, so to do so here means they both got exactly what they wanted.

It seems that in provoking Liger into bringing out the man hiding behind the mask, Liger had inadvertently done the same to Suzuki.